{"id":165383,"date":"2015-06-08T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?guid=ea7e3526fa0f6a08b43aa0165b0077b8"},"modified":"2026-07-16T07:59:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T06:59:30","slug":"spring-robins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/spring-robins\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring Robins"},"content":{"rendered":"

I took this picture of my local American robin on the first day of spring this year.<\/p>\n

We had come through a very cold winter. Like some robins in these parts, this one stayed north. I fed him raisins. There were days when it was so cold that he’d take a raisin and hop away into a place sheltered from the wind to eat it. He kept his feathers puffed up for insulation and often hunkered down so his legs were covered by his belly feathers.<\/p>\n

This is how he looks today. No need to puff up feathers on a warm day in May. Doesn’t he look relatively sleek and leggy? I know this is the same bird because during winter he learned to come to a platform very close to my window for raisins and he still does; the other birds are wary of coming so close.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
I took this picture of my local American robin on the first day of spring this year. Click to enlarge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
We had come through a very cold winter. Like some robins in these parts, this one stayed north. I fed him raisins. There were days when it was so cold that he’d take a raisin and hop away into a place sheltered from the wind to eat it. He kept his feathers puffed up for insulation and often hunkered down so his legs were covered by his belly feathers.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
This is how he looks today. No need to puff up feathers on a warm day in May. Doesn’t he look relatively sleek and leggy? I know this is the same bird because during winter he learned to come to a platform very close to my window for raisins and he still does; the other birds are wary of coming so close.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Here’s how he looks when he’s singing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
And he is not alone! He’s showing up with this one that I think might be planning to build a nest with him. She is more brown above than black and overall more pale. Click to enlarge and compare them.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I took this picture of my local American robin on the first day of spring this year. We had come through a very cold winter. Like some robins in these parts, this one stayed north. I fed him raisins. There were days when it was so cold that he’d take a raisin and hop away […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":2196079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-83SwmNZHQYg\/VQ9ELydN5_I\/AAAAAAAACE4\/EI2tIYWL9fg\/s1600\/robin2.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[676,2450],"class_list":["post-165383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-american-robin","tag-julie-feinstein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2196079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}